1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of greeting cards, political campaign promotional materials, and marketing materials. Specifically, the invention teaches a new and novel method, system and apparatus of creating and assembling one or more multimedia cards at a point of sale location, online, or a “brick and mortar” location. The invention allows a person to select a separate multimedia module (e.g. audio module, light module, movement module, and/or video module) and affix to a greeting card, promotional piece, or marketing material. Thus allowing the combined piece to deliver a multimedia message to the recipient when activated by a mechanically activated, light activated, motion activated, or sound activated means.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any discussion of the related art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such related art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
As will be seen, history has laid a vast trail of products and patents relating to greeting cards that incorporate audio or video messages along with a traditional paper card. The objective of joining a traditional paper greeting card with a multimedia element is to enhance the emotional depth of the message, and create a multi-sensory experience for the recipient.
To that end, greeting cards manufactured with an integral electronic circuit and user interface features, such as a speaker, microphone, video screen, or other multimedia interfaces to deliver the multimedia message are well known and have been available for years.
The greeting card business is huge. Grocery stores, drug stores, florists, gift stores and convenience stores have, for decades, made available very large displays containing thousands of variations of greeting cards. In some larger displays, cards are organized by intended recipient, for example, grandma, son, daughter, mother, boss, or retiree, and in other card displays, cards are organized by particular holidays or events, for example, Christmas, birthday, anniversary, retirement, or get well.
The seemingly exhaustive and increasingly large selection of the myriad card types require retailers to invest heavily in maintaining a large inventory. Further, retailers experience significant losses associated with slow-selling or non-selling cards, holiday greeting cards that must be removed after the holiday season, shipping costs, and most importantly, the cost associated with facility rent of 100s or 1,000s of square feet of floor space needed to display so many cards.
Multimedia cards indeed deliver new and joyful experiences to the card recipients, and they create new revenue channels for card manufacturers and retailers. However, a major drawback to manufactured multimedia greeting cards is that retailers must invest more money and more floor space to display the expanded card product line, further exacerbating the challenge to add even more inventory while maintaining profitability.
Yet, another major drawback is that manufacturing a greeting card with pre-determined graphics, combined with a standardized pre-recorded multimedia module, creates an even greater risk of not matching the combination of printed and multimedia message that satisfies a buyer's preference. In many cases, the graphics of the card may be appealing, but the voice or sound message is not. Or, the audible voice message may be the perfect soothing voice of comfort, but the card graphics are not appealing to the buyer.
Yet another major drawback is the standard manufacturing method of multimedia enhanced greeting cards. Currently, the audio or video module is concealed with an extra flap of paper, requiring additional print and assembly costs.
All of these weighty problems associated with large inventory management, costly floor space, and additional print and assembly costs can be ameliorated if a multimedia module and greeting card are sold separately, thus allowing the customer to combine a selected card with a selected multimedia module. When assembled together, the card plus module becomes a unique and novel product. By not requiring the customer to buy one of the many pre-combined greeting cards, but offering cards that can be mated, the retailer realizes more sales, fewer losses from cards that don't sell, and a higher annual sales per square foot of retail space. In practice, a retailer would be offering many more card options with a much smaller inventory compared to the very high greeting card inventory levels that consume much more retail floor space.
Further, in the highly competitive environments of political campaigning and marketing, there exists a perpetual drive by politicians and marketers to create brand differentiation, and brand preference. This drive creates two distinct time periods during which brand development is most important: 1) prior to the “sale” with the sale being defined as point at which the customer decides on the product or service—or in the context of political campaigns, the point at which a political constituent decides to vote for a candidate or initiative, and 2) after the sale, to reinforce the attributes of the brand of product or service selected by a consumer—a “thank you for selecting Company XYZ” message, for instance.
One proven means of creating differentiation between products, candidates, and brands is the multi-sensory presentation of materials to the buyer or voter. The five human senses include sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Practically speaking, the overwhelming choice of promotional materials includes sight for printed materials and television, and sound for television and radio. However, a novel method to stimulate consumer or constituency decisions is to incorporate personalized multimedia content into traditional physical materials such as marketing materials, and campaign collateral.